


The Eternal Crusade

by punchdrunkard (twopunch)



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Community: areyougame, Gen, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twopunch/pseuds/punchdrunkard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The enemies of the Emperor will know fear when faced with his hate.</p>
<p>Prompt: <i>Warhammer 40K, Sigismund: Time travel - Welcome back, my lord.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eternal Crusade

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Tenses are hard, yo. Also, what I figure Sigismund has been up to since declaring his eternal crusade.
> 
> Written for the [areyougame community](http://areyougame.dreamwidth.org/) fic challenge 2012. Midnight beta by princeps [prettymanly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/prettymanly/pseuds/prettymanly). I would travel back in time to fix my mistakes but time-travel is not my forté...

There are only two mistakes Sigismund regrets in his life.

This is the second:

He was approached by a techmarine who claimed to have discovered an experimental procedure in which one could direct oneself through time in the warp. Time travel itself was not new. Warp travel was always an unstable, unpredictable technology despite the Astronomicon to map the way, and ships rematerializing at unscheduled times happened with more regularity than they liked to admit. To actively map a path that led backwards in time... coming from the mouth of that techmarine during this shell-shocked, confused time in Sigismund’s life, it had sounded rational. It was only later that Sigismund would realise he’d never seen that marine before.

Right up until the moment the oil-slick shimmer of the warp began to blur his vision, Sigismund hadn’t doubted this was a just course of action. The Imperium of Man was falling apart before his eyes thanks to traitors and daemonspawn, the Emperor was dying, and his primarch was dead. The latter two facts stung most bitterly. What use his title, _The Emperor’s Champion_ , when he had failed in his defense? What use being the foremost son and sword of Dorn, the First Captain of the Imperial Fists, when his blade could not prevent the death of his lord?

Grief and shock, he would tell himself, and curse himself a fool for the weakness of having emotions other than rage and hate. But by then his course was fixed. As the churning storms of the warp flashed across his vision, he knew he had erred.

He was spat up in a cold, cavernous room made of soaring steel arches. Row upon row of ovoid chambers stretched out on either side of him. Blue and red lights winked in the dimness, and with a shock of recognition, he knew where he was. _When_ he was.

He was naked, skin dripping with the amniotic fluid of the chamber that had birthed his new self, as it had rebirthed all of his brothers so long ago. Weak from confusion, weak from his untried body, he nonetheless reacted when he heard a door open at one end of the room. He turned and fell into a battle-ready crouch, ignoring the trembling of his muscles as they sought to obey him.

The figures that entered were rendered in silhouette by the light behind them, but Sigismund would damn himself to the warp if he ever failed to recognise the shape of his gene-father, his primarch.

“My lord,” he said, falling to his knees. Tears and a wave of dizziness blurred his vision, his hearts beat a staccato in his still-fusing ribcage. Everything was terribly new and utterly familiar. Sounds were louder -- but they had been loud for hundreds of years. He could see motes of dust disturbed from the thundering passage of boots -- but his vision had been sharp even without the enhancements of his helmet. Taste, smell, feel -- and all of it, all of this, he could remember happening before, could remember exactly what would happen next if, with growing horror, he understood what was happening at all.

“Sigismund,” said Rogal Dorn. Sigismund could hear the smile in his voice, the pride. He dared not raise his eyes, both in fear of what he had done, and overwhelmed with his past-self’s emotional turmoil which was rapidly becoming indistinguishable from his current, present-self’s turmoil.

Dorn is _alive_ , he thought, a fierce joy blooming within him. Only to be crushed with the knowledge that Dorn more accurately _was_ alive, was only alive in this past Sigismund was now reliving.

He tried to speak, to tell Dorn what was happening. To tell Dorn of what would happen. If he could warn Dorn and the Emperor, they would stop Horus, and if they stopped Horus, the Imperium would continue as it had been, expanding ever outwards. He could fight by his primarch’s side forever.

He tried to speak, but it was like being locked into a broken helmet. He could see out, but what he saw was not under his control. He wanted to shout and curse and growl, but his jaw was locked tight and no sound escaped. When he did feel his mouth ease open, it opened to parrot words he’d spoken over two hundred years ago.

Others had criticised Sigismund before for his zealous nature, his narrow focus when given a task to complete. While none doubted his dedication in serving the goals of the Imperium and nobody questioned his standing as one of the best fighters amongst all the legions, there was always talk -- albeit quiet, furtive talk -- about impulsive behaviour and do-or-die-doing charges. This reputation was a ruse as much as Horus’s Mournival was. But it made it no less the truth.

As the horror of his situation faded into acceptance, Sigismund _fought back_. It was, after all, what he did best.

The minutes of his life crawled by, words and actions repeating themselves, and Sigismund devoted his will to the task of regaining autonomy. A finger twitch. A blink of an eye. Nothing happened. He’d even reached out to the minds of psykers, to the Sigilite and the Emperor. If any of them had heard his call, they gave no indication.

One by one, campaigns were re-fought, challenges re-issued, war councils re-called. He ignored them all even as he experienced and remembered experiencing them. The double memory was of little concern when his attention was focused on taking control of his own body. When his past self slept, Sigismund intensified his efforts for the few hours that blankness reigned. Weeks passed, months, years. Nothing happened except what had already happened. Sigismund fought on. All thoughts of why and how did not concern him, only what he could do now. It was not unlike the blazing white haze that overcame him in a pitched battle, when there was only his weapon and the enemy. His past-mind was closest to his current during those moments, and he could almost feel the weight of _something_ , just out of his grasp.

There was only one moment, approaching the end of his time reliving his own life, that he stopped his struggle and allowed events to fall as they had. Here he bent his will to match every moment of the past, rather than against, willed himself to increase the fury and power behind his movements. Should he regain control here -- and he had no doubt that he would, eventually, gain control -- it might throw his aim, destroy the balance of his sword strokes. A moment’s lapse in the Iron Cage could spell the end of that he was so furiously trying to protect both now and then. His eyes turned to his primarch again and again, (re)memorizing the stony blankness of his primarch’s eyes, his brutal grace as he fell upon the traitors like a winter avalanche of blood and gold.

To see the hope and faith of his gene-father turn into despair and disappointment. To watch all he believed and fought for in his twice-lived life trampled by petty men who had never crossed swords with an enemy, who had never shed a drop of blood to build what they now seized with their soft, greedy hands. To exist uselessly in a body that was his but not his own, unable to stop himself from declaring his eternal crusade, one that would take him away from his primarch’s side when he was most needed.

His soul shook with anger as the first mistake he ever regretted came to pass, unavoidable, inevitable, because he was not strong enough yet. The days marched on in the aftermath of Dorn’s capitulation to the new Imperium, an Imperium that Sigismund did not accept then, could not accept now.

His efforts became a thousand-fold, a stimm-soaked madman thrashing in his bindings, all other emotions and thoughts falling away to an anger that eclipsed any he had felt before. This was not the blood-soaked, selfish rage displayed by the traitors. This was a pure hate that consumed all notion of space and time.

Awareness came back to him, though not autonomy. He watched as his past-self matched up to where his present-self started, as he said yes to the strange techmarine, as the sickening shimmer fell over his vision, as he found himself back, back again at the beginning or the end and the loop started all over.

Over and over. A hundred times. A thousand. A million. Sigismund did not bother keeping count. Anger permeated his consciousness, whittled his thoughts to a point finer than a monomolecular knife. Anger was all he had left and it drove him onward, fighting and seeking for any opening. Over and over and over again, until --

“Welcome back, my lord,” says the techmarine.

Sigismund finds himself standing on the dais in the teleportation chamber, staring into the red eyes of an unfamiliar Black Templar. The vox-distorted voice is hauntingly familiar, but he knows each of his men, can recognise them even without the individual marks of battle-honours or clan allegiances that decorate an Astartes’ power armour.

He blinks.

_He blinks_. That is not in the script. Neither is the techmarine’s greeting. The white noise of anger doesn’t fade with his surprise; it merely reshapes itself around this new freedom like molten metal flowing into a different cast.

His sword is out and through the guard provided by the techmarine’s gorget. The techmarine does not move and makes no sound. “Who are you?” Sigismund demands. “Remove your helmet.” It is strange to be saying new things, to feel his lungs move in his chest, his lips shape the air as he breathes out. He doesn’t understand what is going on, but this is a distant, secondary concern at the moment. His hearts beat strong and steady and his sword does not waver.

The techmarine raises his hands up slowly, reaching for the release catches. There is a faint hiss of depressurized air. The techmarine removes his helmet.

Sigismund stares into his own face.

“I remember that look,” the other Sigismund says wryly. “I wore it myself when this happened to me.”

“Sorcery,” Sigismund hisses and strikes out, but the other Sigismund dodges away with ease.

“I did that too,” he says. “Do you think you are the first one to break through?”

Sigismund strikes again. He has little time or inclination to listen to the lies foul warpspawn might spew. Nothing matters now but to kill this monster. The other Sigismund dodges again, moves with uncannily familiarity -- his own moves from an outside view. Sigismund locks away the confusion that threatens his focus. This is like shadow-boxing, except this shadow can be killed.

A sword blocks his next cut. He is already turning toward this new threat as he registers that the sword is identical to his own.

He is facing himself again. Beyond this Sigismund, coming out of the shadows of the bulkheads and through the doors, are more Templars clad in night-black power armour, his own heraldry stark on each shoulder. Their helmets are off. They all wear his face.

The first other Sigismund joins their ranks. “I would say put down your sword and let us talk, brother, but I know what I did when this happened.” A few of the others laugh, even as they all draw their swords. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

\-----

They explain it to each other as best as they can. More Sigismunds show up, not day by day as time does not pass here, but steadily enough.

He no longer cares to change the past; he understands now that it would be folly of the worst sort. Actions have consequences that cannot be undone. Mistakes can only be overcome.

All of this, the Imperium attacked from without and rotting within -- it is a mistake.

Sigismund will destroy all that threatens the Emperor’s vision. He will fulfill his primarch’s duty and wishes. Sigismund will wait patiently for his numbers to swell, will wait for an eternity if he must, until the fury of their collective presence shatters the chains that shackle them to this moment.

The enemies of the Emperor will know fear. They will die running from his many swords, his many bullets, his many fists.

Sigismund has all the time he needs to gather his army, and his hate was -- is -- _will be_ legion.


End file.
